Vehicles are abandoned in airport lots

Published 10:15 pm, Saturday, August 1, 2015

Interior view of the terminal at Midland International Airport, Feb. 13, 2014. James Durbin/Reporter-Telegram

Interior view of the terminal at Midland International Airport, Feb. 13, 2014. James Durbin/Reporter-Telegram

Photo: JAMES DURBIN

Vehicles are abandoned in airport lots

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Officials at Midland International Airport have a problem: company-owned vehicles abandoned by employees who have been laid off.

“If they get laid off, they drive their company truck out to the airport, fly out and never come back. And then the company realizes that it’s here,” said Justine Ruff, director of airports during the airport’s last board meeting.

It’s an issue that has happened “dozens” of times over the past one or two years, according to city officials, and authorities began taking note of the issue during the downturn of the economy.

Airport parking authority issued a $1,100 parking bill in April for a company vehicle that had been in the parking lot since September.

“For some people, they’re planning to come back to that vehicle; for others they might leave the vehicle for someone else to come pick it up,” city spokeswoman Sara Bustilloz said Friday. “We don’t know exactly why, but sometimes they just never return. And then we’ll get a call from the company, which has tracked down the last place their employee was.”

A majority of these cases are vehicles that have been left for a number of weeks or months, which -- at up to $80 a week -- an amount to hefty fees.

Though the issue may irritate driver in search of an open spot, the issue doesn’t have a negative effect on the airport’s bottom line and can become guaranteed revenue for the Airport Fund, Bustilloz said.

“A lot of these do happen in our covered parking lot, which is our most popular parking lot, and that’s usually full every day anyway. So it could be kicking somebody out of that area if it’s full, but we’re still getting revenue that we would have had otherwise,” she said.

Paved with dollars

The airport’s parking revenue reached a record high in June. Nearly $347,000 was collected in parking fees that were placed in the airport’s enterprise fund. This is an increase of about 40 percent since June 2014. But in June of this year, passenger numbers were down by 4.6 percent compared to June a year ago.

“So for enplanements to be down, and our parking revenue to be so high up, it doesn’t make any sense unless everyone drives their own car to the airport now, and families of four are not traveling together,” Ruff said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Some of the discrepancy can be attributed to recent completion of additional parking lots and the slight increase in parking rates in October. Yet the difference is not enough to account for the spike in June’s revenue, officials said.